iMac keeps crashing after Catalina upgrade

Yes, you could be right that we're the incredibly unlucky few. But even taking that into account, Catalina seems so poorly implemented - the whole business of splitting up iTunes for instance. Even on a machine where Catalina is stable, syncing music and podcasts to your phone is now as unreliable as using 3rd party apps. Podcasts, esp, are syncing terribly - one ends up with 2 of each episode on the phone or the episodes that you want do not sync at all. Something is broken.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the kernel panics: what concerns me is that there's not even evidence of cumulative stability with each update of Catalina. For instance I get more kernel panics on 10.15.3 than I did on 10.15.2. Would therefore not be surprised if, in your case, you enjoy stability on 10.15.3 but things go downhill with 10.15.4. We should not have to be terrified that an update might ruin things for us. It ought to be the opposite. Period. The fact that some machines have issues straight out of the box suggests that though we might be unlucky, someone at Apple needs to take responsibility here.

I completely agree, it's a shoddy release & I'm concerned about regression in the next version since there are too many reported issues. For someone who's just dropped the thick end of $5k on a new MBP 16 and then has problems it's shocking.

I bought my new MBP a couple of months before the 16" release so it's machine that also should have had no problems but experience has been awful, and destroys your faith in reliability which is the main thing everyone needs. I'd go back to Mojave in an instant except I've migrated everything so it'd be too difficult and I see others have tried that and it's not been a success for many,

I've never had this concern before with a macos upgrade. Over the past 10 years or so it's been pain free so something has seriously gone wrong at Apple, letting this go out in this state.

I've never seen such an ongoing state of crisis by mac users who just want to get their work done and it's causing absolute chaos judging by the comments people are leaving.

I'd like to see Craig get the same treatment as Scott did when a shoddy piece of software was released on his watch, which actually wasn't relatively this bad. I guess if he "moves on" in the next few months, then someone has been made accountable.

Certainly won't be rushing to 10.15.4

Well, Peter, it's like this. I have everything running happily on 2 machines with Mojave. My MBP is dead, I haven't replaced or repaired it yet, and I'm still over $2k out of pocket, am missing some files and still doing workarounds to get stuff done. And I have not figured in lost time and productivity, as I had one research project delayed about 2 months. Unless I'm actually on the road, I have dual monitor set-ups at both work locations and use a video projector 4 times a day, most weekdays. Crashes were incredibly disruptive: a series of crashes loses me time at my desk that I can shuffle a bit, but losing 10+ minutes in a 50 minute lecture is something I can't re-arrange, as I'm focused on getting the machine running. The cost to replace the MBP, if irreparable after Catalina, is going to cut into the budget significantly.

If I update to 10.15.4 with nothing but hope, I'm pretty much asking for a disaster. In the circumstances, do I really want another period of several months of instability and crashes, potential loss of another machine, and the loss of productivity that goes with it? Risk analysis would suggest that updating would be considered grounds for commitment to a mental health facility.

So I'm going to play it safe, and we'll stick with Mojave. It's stable and working, on my machines, as well as in my wife's business (which we never upgraded, fortunately). I'll adopt a long wait-and-see with 10.16. But I simply won't consider any version of Catalina as an option for any of my machines.

I've had very few issues with my Macs and the operating system in the past, and I've been here since Classic Mac OS v 5.5, if not earlier: 32 years now since my original Mac SE. But I'm a grown-up now with real work and a real dependency on computer hardware and software to get my work done and get paid. Once bitten, twice shy, Peter.

@peter_watt.

If you'd seen my reply earlier you'll see I'm now stable on 10.15.3

So I'm not risking opening up to more issues by installing newer versions until I see others on here are getting their problems resolved on later versions.

I can't afford to waste any more time losing work with a 6 months old machine crashing intermittently so I'm staying put until the general concensus is that ongoing problems have been resolved for everyone.

I said I'M not in a rush - I'm only talking for myself. If I'm stable I'm staying that was as long as possible.

Others still having problems will be clammering for another version asap hoping it solves their problems and I hope it does and I will then give it a go.

Well said.

We buy these expensive machine not because they look nice, we invest in them because in the past the OS has been reliable and Apple has delivered year in year out. In my mind this has all changed since Catalina, I used the original claassic mac as well so this is a massive mind shift for me.

As a freelance data consultant and software developer I can't afford to lose time or work because it's all billable, or as you've indicated it's causing delays which makes client unhappy. I have 3 machines, both MBP's are on Catalina but the only major problem I've had is I need multiple monitors for my work and this has not been possible for several months without crashes. I never upgraded an iMac which is fine on Mojave, unfortunately it's not portable :-(

For me it's basically my MBP is a high performance linux box with an interface I've gotten used to. BUT in future I may think about just buying a cheap laptop every year, slap linux on it and run everything remotely on AWS or Azure in the cloud. For people running specific software that's not going to be possible for everyone but it's certainly becoming an option for me if this situation drags on.

For the time I've lost on Catalina issues, I could have paid for a couple of servers in AWS for a year.

Tried Belkin and Fujistu & Toshiba TB3 docks, Dell and Lenovo Monitors, many cables with and without time machine. Still get daily crashes

I have apple coming on site this week - depressed because I imagine I'll go through various hardware changes that will prove fruitless .... will advise if there is any happy news ...

This one is a new one; never seen it before:

panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff800f6d2dec): initproc exited -- no exit reason available -- (signal 6, exit status 0 )

uuid info:

 0x103dc2000 uuid = <ebc07cb6-870a-3a8e-b48a-67f62ea161f3>

 0x103ab3000 uuid = <d9ac7f6e-23f3-34ca-9464-c4fe9da4c8b1>

Thread 12 crashed

RAX: 0x0000000000000000, RBX: 0x000070000b739000, RCX: 0x000070000b738228, RDX: 0x0000000000000000

RSP: 0x000070000b738228, RBP: 0x000070000b738250, RSI: 0x0000000000000006, RDI: 0x00000000000adeab

R8: 0x0000000000000000, R9: 0x0000000000000000, R10: 0x000070000b739000, R11: 0x0000000000000246

R12: 0x00000000000adeab, R13: 0x0000000000000043, R14: 0x0000000000000006, R15: 0x0000000000000016

RFL: 0x0000000000000246, RIP: 0x00007fff657527fa, CS: 0x0000000000000007, SS: 0x0000000000000023

Thread 0: 0xffffff8022afc000

           0x00007fff657519a6

           0x00007fff655c2376

           0x0000000000000000

Thread 1: 0xffffff8035616520

           0x00007fff6574d92e

           0x00007fff65810827

           0x0000000000000000

etc

peter_watt wrote:

Surely feedback assistant is for the beta program only?

Nope. The app is available on both betas and releases, and is the recommended way of reporting issues in the current *OS versions. It was previously bugreport.apple.com.

And issues definitely occur in both betas and releases.

peter_watt wrote:

Guide me round this

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/7a355301-c938-412b-90ca-87ba4ddf5c35

It says quite clearly to join the beta program to give feedback on betas. It doesn't say that you can only use the Feedback Assistant to report issues on betas. And the app happily submits feedback on release software.

Do you imagine that Apple aren't interested in hearing about issues in release software?

peter_watt wrote:

I am asking you, Do we need to join the Beta program to use it. Seems like a yes, No need to get edgy.

Wasn't trying to be edgy; sorry if it came over that way. You don't need to be in the beta program to use it.

Although that story looks like it may be different if you want to use the iOS app.

I bought the new 16 inch MacBook Pro in late December 2019. Since the day I opened it I have had problems with start up, shut down, sleep, heat, etc. It started with a blank screen at startup. The keyboard would light up but the screen remains blank, I have to force shut down (Shift, Option, Power button) wait a minute press the power button again. Then the screen will work.

Other times I will close the top, go away for a while, come back open the top and have to start all over.

Recently I shut down the computer overnight and when I picked it up the next morning it was hot!.

Yesterday, while searching for items online the computer shut itself down ( the cursor stopped working and everything went black and a "swish" sound occurred and it shut off. This happened twice.

I have had help from 3 different support personnel about the black screen including a senior supervisor and have reinstalled the operating system. We thought we had the black screen at start up fixed but it came back with all the other problems.

My previous MacBook Pro (mid 2009, 17 inch) had no startup/ shutdown problems at all. (Still works)

I rarely use battery, so it is plugged in to the power cord almost 100% of the time.

Thanks. Tried that but I get the error below. Guess I need to be immersed in at least one Dev or Beta project and therefore it is not a tool for Mr Ordinary user. I'll continue with Apple.com/feedback

I have found and opened the app ok. It then tells me I am not a member of any projects. I guess you have to be a dev or a beta tester to use it even if you only want to feedback a bug on a general release version.

I have no spare devices so I dont want to falsely claim to have a beta version,

That's strange. I joined public betas on iOS in the past and un-enrolled from them too, but wouldn't consider myself as part of any beta at the moment and certainly not a Dev. Never had the guts to run betas on my Mac either.

Oh that's very strange. I am a developer, so I can't really test, but that doesn't seem right.

I don't think the apple.com/feedback page is really for reporting technical issues.

If this isn't some sort of bug that you're seeing, I guess you could open a free developer account 'out of curiosity' which would presumably give you access.

And with a score of almost 5000 in here, you're definitely not 'Mr. Ordinary User' 😂

EDIT: Actually I can see apple.com/feedback has facilities for bug reporting. But the feedback app is nice, and it automatically collects relevant diagnostics when you open a new case.